As network-connected vehicles become more commonplace, their function has moved far beyond merely a machine to ferry people from one place to the next. Instead, vehicles have become an extension of the passengers' digital lives. Many contemporary vehicles include seamless integration of media from cell phones, the Internet, and social media along with telephony, chat, SMS, and other features, allowing people to stay connected while commuting, shopping and/or traveling. In some vehicles, many of the communication and media-based features and accessories may be voice-activated and controlled. These convenient features allow the driver to perform hands-free functions such as tuning a radio, selecting media (e.g., music or video), providing instructions to a navigational system, or the like, without taking the driver's attention off of the road.
In a multi-passenger scenario there may be numerous situations where there are multiple sources of audio. For instance, there may be two or more people taking phone calls simultaneously, a children's movie playing in the backseat, music playing in the front, an open window, ambient noise, etc., which can adversely affect the ability to intelligibly interpret voice commands in conventional hands-free systems. Better systems are needed to address such problems.